Open source professorship at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Germany’s first open source professorship was established at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

First professor of Open Source will be Dr. Dirk Riehle, MBA.

The professorship and its research group will focus on the use of open source as a target for developers, and its application in enterprises.

The group hopes to develop methods and business models that can support decision-makers in their transition to open source software.
Professor Dirk Riehle, brings twelve years of industry-wide experience, most recently at SAP’s open source research facility in Silicon Valley.

“We would like to support and encourage open source development in Germany together with industry partners,” says Riehle. “Our research indicates a marked trend that the solutions based on open standards and open source methods significantly increase the success factors for larger projects compared to traditional methods.”

In a press conference on 26 November Riehle discussed the improvement of development tools for open source software and talked about possibilities to optimise the development processes.

Riehl’s research group also wants to become an incubator for open source spinoffs.

The new professorship will also receive some financial support from open source enterprises such as Red Hat and Novell. Of the three PhD candidates envisioned, one half of one position will be financed by Novell and tightly linked with the SUSE development center in Nuremberg.

“The doctoral position will strengthen the professorship,” says Roland Fleck, Nuremberg city councillor and economic advisor. “Furthermore, it promotes collaboration between research and the industry and will make Nuremberg a model for open source in Europe.”